1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a mobile device supporting at least two operating systems (OS), in particular, to a method for sharing a positioning system between two operating systems.
2. Description of Related Art
Common mobile devices are generally divided into notebook personal computers and personal digital assistants (PDA). The notebook personal computers adopting x86 architecture and non-embedded operating systems have stronger computation ability and higher power consumption. The PDAs adopting embedded architecture and embedded operating systems have lower computation ability and less power consumption. Therefore, it has become a mainstream product design to integrate a notebook computer and a PDA into one mobile device, so as to combine the advantages of the two to improve the overall performance.
In the above mobile device, two central processing units (CPU) are installed for running two operating systems at the same time. One of the CPUs is used to run the non-embedded operating system (e.g. Microsoft Windows Vista®), and the other CPU is used to run the embedded operating system (e.g. Microsoft Windows Mobile®). The two operating systems can be run at the same time. Thus, a user can perform simple works, for example, schedule arrangement, contactor management, E-mail handling, and so on under the embedded operating system, so as to reduce power consumption. The user can also switch the mobile device to run the non-embedded operating system so as to perform word processing, audio-visual editing, and other resource-consuming works.
However, generally a wireless communication module provided by a mobile device, for example a global positioning system (GPS) module or a network communication module, can be used by only an individual operating system of the mobile device at a time. Therefore, as far as the mobile device supporting a plurality of operating systems is concerned, the individual operating systems cannot share the wireless communication module to receive data. Thus, in order to allow different operating systems supported by the mobile device to have the wireless communication function at the same time, manufacturers should arrange wireless signal receivers, for example, satellite positioning signal receivers or mobile network signal receivers, in the mobile device in accordance with the quantity of the operating systems. Consequently, the manufacturing cost, size, weight, and power consumption of the mobile device are inevitably increased, which goes against the current development trend of “light, thin, short, small”, and power saving of the mobile devices.